cahn | Frederick the Great post links

If it's any comfort, Carlyle's reputation - well, not the general one, but the one of his Fritz biography as THE biography - has been going downhill througout the last century, even before most people detoxed on the Great Man of History dogma.

So I've gathered, but at one time, it was all I had, and my Katte-shipping heart now regrets that, grrrr. And I love your "detox" word choice!

it makes for a sense of getting emotionally left behind or at best having to share, and so her subconscious decided that first Keith, then Katte were suspicious characters

I agree that was a major reason. I think a secondary reason is that as Fritz got older, he started making more life choices that she couldn't agree with, and it was a lot easier to blame the people he was hanging out with than to blame him for his own bad judgment, or accept that they were starting to have different values and priorities. How often does "He/she's not a bad kid, he/she just hangs out with bad kids?" get invoked for teenagers throughout the world?

It also struck me that the two of them don't appear to have been close to any of their other siblings at any point.

I agree, I've always been struck by this. And...

It's basically a "you and me against the world" thing formed early on.

This, yes, exactly!

Those poor, poor kids.

I mean, I mostly thought Carlyle's problem (having only read these bits out of context) was that he depended rather too slavishly on Wilhelmine as a source without thinking that she might have had her own (psychological) agendas.

I agree that was a major reason. I think a secondary reason is that as Fritz got older, he started making more life choices that she couldn't agree with, and it was a lot easier to blame the people he was hanging out with than to blame him for his own bad judgment, or accept that they were starting to have different values and priorities.

I agree with both of these -- I definitely got both of those vibes from Wilhelmine. (Though to be honest if I hadn't had context provided by you guys, I'd probably have been just like Carlyle and taken her at her word.)

I mean, I mostly thought Carlyle's problem (having only read these bits out of context) was that he depended rather too slavishly on Wilhelmine as a source without thinking that she might have had her own (psychological) agendas.

You can see him slavishly depending on her! He might as well have "Wilhelmine Is My Source" blazoned on every page. I'm also not sure, even from his Wikipedia page (maybe

selenak knows more, she often does), how comfortable he was with Fritz's sexuality, which tends to seriously color how people present his favorites.

[ETA: I should also note that Carlyle may have shared Wilhelmine's intense subconscious desire to distribute as much blame as possible to Fritz's companions instead of Fritz, because Carlyle's whole philosophy toward life, as exemplified by but not limited to his bio of Fritz, was "Great Men Rule (Both Figuratively and Literally)." Fritz was a great man and ruler; therefore we need to explain away the things we don't like as much as possible. So I suspect Wilhelmine's take on things really resonated with Carlyle.]

I'd probably have been just like Carlyle and taken her at her word

It's easy to do! I myself, every time I went to Carlyle looking for shipping material, came away with, "Well, maybe I'm over-romanticizing the whole thing and young Fritz actually really had bad judgment about boyfriends at that age. There's no reason he couldn't have, after all. I still *wish* I could have a proper ship for them, though!" It was only after examining multiple sources recently, some of which called attention to the biases of others, that I managed to arrive at my own opinions (and awareness of where the boundaries of my knowledge lie).

Edited 2019-10-07 05:43 (UTC)

Now it's been decades since I read Carlyle's biography (my grandfather had a - shortened - German edition in his library), but here's the irony: he had no problem being wary of Wilhelmine as a source when it came to her actual criticism of her brother, pointing out that the memoirs were written during their three years enstragement and thus likely coloured by her emotional state at that time. Otoh, I would caution against assuming homophobia, not least because Carlyle, cranky Scot that he was, didn't held back on the -isms he actually had, which were plenty, so if he'd any hangups in that direction he'd have ranted about them, not being coy. Plus the mid-Victorians, of which he was one, were actually wild about "passionate friendships" between men. (Think Tennyson's poem In Memoriam - and Tennyson was a friend.) Considering Carlyle's first biographer (also a friend) thought he (Carlyle) was impotent, his Albee-esque marriage to Jane Welch not withstanding, it's more likely that if C thought about Fritz' sexuality at all, he considered him a fellow asexual (not in those terms; I'm always trying to avoid putting current-day framings of sexuality into historical figures' heads), basically seeing his hero Above It All.

Back to Wilhelmine for a moment, I've just listened to one of those exchanges which make me salute her, when she and Fritz are discussing new books - these two were such endearing geeks in that regard, constantly talking about music and books in between news and family drama:

W: Have just come across a book that really made me furios. The author says women are not capable of rational thought, only men are. So we've been put on a level with sheep.

F: Gotta agree with the author. You, dearest sis, are of course an exception and Not Like Other Girls, but then I don't consider you a woman. You are one of the first men of Europe.

W: Thanks but no thanks. I'm a woman. I don't want to be thought as an exception. (literal quote is "I don't want to be held apart from my sisters"). Maybe rethink your criteria?

F: *changes subject*

Then there's this gem:

W: OMG have just heard you wrote to Voltaire and HE WROTE YOU BACK! A-plus fanboy achievement, bro. I'm so envious. But, um. Gossip says you've also invited him. Are you sure that's wise? He's supposed to a bit on the vain side in person, not quite living up to his writings.

F: Pffff. I'm also interest in him for his writings, don't care about his personal quirks at all, what could possibly go wrong?

And, around 1737:

W: Have just heard rumors that Mom and Dad have done a 180%. She's supposed to have gone religious while he's supposed to have discovered music. What the hell?

F: Don't worry, it's not true. Mom's no more religious than before and Dad has discovered painting, not music. That can still be our thing.

BTW, they always refer to their parents as "the King" and "The Queen", never as their mother and father. But to be fair, that might be writing custom of the day as much as reflecting their emotions, considering Wilhelmine refers to her husband first as "the Prince" and then, after his father's death, as "The Margrave", never by his first name or as "my husband". Fritz the very few times he mentions her refers to Elisabeth Christine as "the Crown Princess", but that's less surprising. Oh and, one of these times is a downright sympathetic reference, when telling Wilhelmine "Potsdam and Berlin are hell right now, the King is having a go at me again, and even the Crown Princess has lost nearly all her standing with him and gets similar treatment".

Oh, GOOD for you, Wilhelmine! *applauds*

(I see the Prussian cyber agents are at it again. They're very dedicated to their jobs!)

[Hit reply too soon]

but here's the irony: he had no problem being wary of Wilhelmine as a source when it came to her actual criticism of her brother

Ah, yes, I reread what I wrote and realized it reads like a globally applicable comment. I meant specifically about Katte and Keith. And that is also why I think it's partly his own pro-Fritz biases showing: he follows W blindly when what she says *resonates* with him.

And when I said "homophobic," I phrased it as "reflexes of homophobic mindsets" deliberately, without specifying *whose* mindset. I need to read Wilhelmine's memoirs more closely, instead of skimming (it's next on my list), but just from recent rereading of the Katte affair, she comes across as unhappy with both his freethinking (which Carlyle would not be), and his and Keith's "inappropriate" relationships with her brother, which I've been taking to mean sexual. If I am way off the mark, let me know. Maybe she really was just worried about FW's homophobia, and distressed at her brother having intense emotional relationships with people who are not her...but her whole language about his boyfriends comes across as homophobic: "debauched," "dissolute," "irregular."

But whereas Carlyle was on board with the whole freethinking thing, and as I said I had no idea about his attitude toward sexuality one way or the other (thank you for clarifying!), I've been assuming that a lot of biographers are sometimes just not questioning what might lie behind the portrayals in their sources. And he always seemed like one of them when I was rereading this section looking for shipping material.

Edited 2019-10-07 16:01 (UTC)

Wilhelmine is awesome! <3

...it sounds worth reading these letters. Are they translated into English? I can read enough French that in theory it would be possible for me to read it untranslated, although in practice I would probably just not bother until that mythical time I have more free time.

BTW, they always refer to their parents as "the King" and "The Queen", never as their mother and father. But to be fair, that might be writing custom of the day as much as reflecting their emotions, considering Wilhelmine refers to her husband first as "the Prince" and then, after his father's death, as "The Margrave", never by his first name or as "my husband".

This confused the heck out of me in her memoirs for quite a long time until I figured this out. I was all "Where's her husband?" :)

I've sort of hit pause on the memoirs for a while, partially because I've been reading other things to figure out what to nominate for Yuletide, and partially as it got kind of depressing while she was navigating her in-laws. I don't know why it's more depressing than her flat-out family-of-origin abuse, though it's perhaps cumulative. And maybe because it's more mundanely awful than her original family's over-the-top craziness. And also probably because I was reading it in large part for the Wilhelmine-Fritz relationship, which is of course not as much of a thing once she's been married.

Relatedly, of course it makes sense to check the background of biographers for how it may influence their attitude re: Fritz, boyfriends and politics, FW and parent issues. Here's me providing you with one for Theodor Fontane.

Attitude towards parents and parental authority in general:

Complicated. His father and mother married young and regretted it for the ensuing decades. Dad was Henri Louis Fontane, lover of anecdotes, fun and games, inveterate gambler and thus cause of bankruptcy and worries; the fun parent. Mum was Emilie Labry (yup, both of Fontane's parents have French names; Fritz' great grandfather had invited all those Huguenots Louis XIV had kicked out into Prussia, which benefited the principality a great deal and meant there was an important minority of French speakers around), often mortally embarrassed by her husband making a fool of himself socially even before he gambled away the family money (again) and fond of physical punishment; the discipline parent. As a boy, Theo resented her for it. Later, he came to respect her and see her difficult situation, but he still thought beating your kid was a lousy form of education and didn't do it with his own.

Attitude towards Prussia: Complicated. "the beloved and hated Prussia", is how he phrases it at one point. Young Theo, influenced both by Dad's enthusiasm for Napoleon and his own political ideas, took part in the 1848 revolution and even wrote an essay titled "Why Prussia must perish", by which he meant that the Prussian state was so codified as a military and authoritarian state by now that in order to achieve a unified Germany with the other German states, it would have to be either so thoroughly reformed that it wouldn't be Prussia anymore or get dissolved into a larger Germany. Then the 1848 revolution was defeated. Theo's mother: Told you so. Now you're out of job. And you've got a new wife and your first kid. If you don't want to end up like your father, you better take the job at this arch-conservative ultra Prussian journal I've asked my local preacher to get you! Theo: swallows, takes job. Writes, among other things, the basics for what would become "Wanderungen durch die Mark Brandenburg", aka the book the Katte tragedy excerpt is from, for this very conservative journal. Later, once he had achieved some name recognition, switches to another, moderate journal. (Fontane didn't make it big time as a novelist until he was well into his 60s.) Once he finally achieved fame and very late fortune in his 70s, he amazed and delighted the younger writers by supporting the aventgarde theatre of his day instead of putting down new stuff, and politically arguing for reform again.

Like his father, he loved anecdotal historical ramblings (he'd be a great contributer to this journal, too), and he'd always enjoyed stories about Prussian nobles and kings, it wasn't that he suddenly discovered them post revolution. But his favourites among the Hohenzollern were not so coincidentally the ones who never got on the throne (i.e. Fritz' brother Heinrich, but also nephew Louis Ferdinand).

In terms of contemporary (i.e. contemporary to his lifetime) Prussian society, Fontane still is regarded as THE realist novelist, depicting said society from the inside with a mixture of affection and acid observation of its flaws.

Attitude towards sex in general and m/m in particular: as a person, had two (early dead) pre-marital illegitimate kids. His wife Emilie (another one, bearing the same first name as his mother just to confuse casual biographers) has been an illegitimate daughter herself (with a horror childhood; she got adopted, then her adopted mother died, and her adopted father took up with a prostitute who tied little Emilie to a post in the courtyard while servicing soldiers in her rooms). As a writer, Fontane was famous for his three dimensional female characters, several of whom have non-marital sex. So much for the het side of things. Re: m/m, he had a bff called Wilhelm Wolfssohn who wrote him a love poem when they were young and passionate letters with "I am your Carlos, you are my Posa" etc. (that definitely was a 19th century passionate friendship), but fictionally speaking, there's not much reflection of that. There's no intense male friendship in a Fontane novel that I can think of (there are of course male friendships, but as a writer Fontane genuinely seems to have been more interested in exploring female characters and the way they relate to men and each other).

Is he likely to have projected a contemporary political figure into Fritz? Not into Fritz the crown prince, but Old Fritz the remote shadow in Schach von Wuthenow, possibly, to wit: Bismarck. Fontane went to and thro between "magnificent bastard" and "reactionary bastard" on Bismarck through most of his life, ever since they were on opposite sides in the 1848 revolution in their youth.

...this is really cool, he seems like rather an awesome character. I kind of love that he's famous for his 3D female characters :D

Frederick the Great post links

Re: Tragic ship

Re: Tragic ship

Re: Tragic ship

Re: Tragic ship

Re: Tragic ship

Re: Tragic ship

Re: Tragic ship

Meanwhile, Fontane

Re: Meanwhile, Fontane